"From typing furiously to being present": Why one of Indiana’s largest multi-specialty behavioral health groups chose Heidi

Challenge

"Madly typing or actually listening": The documentation dilemma

For Indiana Health Group (IHG), technology adoption always came with tradeoffs. As an early EMR adopter, they understood how digital tools could streamline operations - but also how they could interfere with the therapeutic relationship.

"Before, I had to choose between having a crappy note or sacrificing the face-to-face experience with patients," explains Dr. Chris Bojrab, IHG's president. "I'd either be madly typing to capture everything or trying to stay present while knowing my documentation would suffer."

The practice had invested significant effort in creating custom EMR templates to improve efficiency. As Dr. Bojrab notes, "Back in the day, we were one of the early adopters of EMR. I built most of the templates for that. In fact, the EMR company we work with, we did a little horse trading and they use the templates that I developed sort of as their base psychiatric stuff."

Despite being tech pioneers (they were doing EMRs before EMRs were cool), they needed something more. 

Solution

Beyond templates: AI that gets mental health 

When evaluating Heidi's AI scribe, Dr. Bojrab approached it with both optimism and careful scrutiny:

"When I first got on and started playing with it, it was better than I expected it to be at this point. I was surprised how adroitly it handled the lingo for being a general system. That was impressive."

Key factors in adopting Heidi Health:

• Sophisticated understanding and application of behavioral health lingo
• Flexible template system that allows customization
• Adaptation into existing EHR workflow
• Quality and comprehensiveness of documentation
• Ability to meaningfully engage with patients 

The value proposition became clear quickly. As Dr. Bojrab recalls: 

"I purposefully didn't look at your pricing because I decided I'm going to try this for two or three days. And then the question I'm going to ask myself at the end of two to three days is if my practice wasn't going to buy this and if I was going to look at buying it on my own, how much would I pay for it? At the end of three days, I'd be like I would pay $1,000 a month for this for my quality of life."

Implementation

Template magic: scaling across providers

IHG developed a streamlined workflow combining their existing EMR with Heidi. Dr. Bojrab shares his pro tip:

"I'll put the patient's name in, go to my EMR, go to letter section, have it default to that. That's the letter it automatically has created. When I open up letters, I copy and paste it and throw it into context and then start recording and start my appointment with the patient. That way the system is loaded with what their diagnoses are, what their current and past meds are. That's something I found that helps me help Heidi build a better note for me."

The practice leverages multiple features to optimize their workflow:

• Pre-populated patient context for more accurate documentation
• Custom templates for different visit types
• Automated letter generation: letters for attorneys letters for time off work, referral letters
• Other documentation capabilities like forensic reports or outlines for external use
• Snippets for frequently used text

"I'm the nerd-in-chief for the practice," notes Dr. Bojrab. "We designed it so each of our individual users can modify it or change it however they want. It's all about flexibility.”

Impact

In their first five months with Heidi, Indiana Health's providers have documented over 12,000 patient consultations through the platform. This has saved approximately 120,000 minutes in documentation time, translating to $200,000 in recovered clinical time value (based on an average rate of $100/hour).

From typing to talking

"It's improved our clinician-patient experience significantly," Dr. Bojrab emphasizes. "It allows me to build a better note but at the same time actually talk to my patient more conversationally, be more present in the moment and still wind up with a good note."

Better notes, less stress

"I like that I'm capturing more information in my notes than what I used to," shares Dr. Bojrab. 

The improvements include:

• Richer documentation without the headaches
• Better capture of clinical nuances
• More time for what matters

The quality of life revolution

"For us, it's mainly a quality of life thing," Dr. Bojrab explains. "It's improved our quality of life. It's improved our clinician-patient experience."

Unlike other specialties where AI documentation might primarily drive revenue enhancement, IHG found different value: 

"I think this does different things for different practices depending on how you're structured. I can imagine that for a lot of practices, this will allow you to better document things so you can capture more reimbursement. Honestly for us, it's mainly a quality of life thing."

What’s next

Dr. Bojrab continues to explore new ways to leverage the system: "I still have to sit down with it and learn it a little bit better. It's on my forever to-do list to refine our templates and work on some new templates because I'm sure that we could be doing more with it."

He sees potential for even more advanced features: "You could imagine a system that would create this word cloud out of your clinical exchange. If there was a way to preserve that over time... looking at these conversations over the past six months, here are some of the words or phrases that popped up that we see also being associated with other people when they wind up making a suicide attempt, or when they become non-adherent with medicines."

"It's really been a fantastic tool to have," Dr. Bojrab concludes with a smile. "So far, it's just been great out of the box."

Ready to transform your behavioral health practice? Learn how Heidi Health can enhance your patient care while reducing documentation burden at www.heidihealth.com